Google, Anthropic, Stripe, Shopify, Salesforce, and H&M Group have committed $915 million to purchase carbon removal credits through Google's Frontier advance market commitment program. The goal is to send a clear demand signal to researchers and investors that a market exists for these technologies, helping scale methods like enhanced rock weathering, ocean alkalinity enhancement, biomass injection, and waste-to-energy with carbon capture. The Frontier program, launched in 2022, aims to buy $1 billion of carbon removal by 2030. Last year, seven portfolio companies delivered around 23,000 tons of removal, roughly double the prior year, and broke ground on 1.4 million tons of new annual capacity. This year, portfolio companies are forecasting more than 50,000 tons removed. Google says it will concentrate purchases on technologies with gigaton-scale potential and require clear demand pathways from compliance markets, regulation, or government procurement. Microsoft remains the largest corporate buyer of carbon removals, having signed agreements to remove 45 million metric tonnes in fiscal year 2025. The Frontier group acknowledges that policy takes years to develop and that corporate buyers bridge the gap by providing reliable revenue for companies to commercialize their technologies. The major question now is whether demand will materialize at the magnitude required to reach gigaton scale.
